Tennesse Man Claim Police Beat Him With Chairs, Ping Pong Equipment After His Arrest…

For every sto­ry of police bru­tal­i­ty that gains nation­al atten­tion, there are sev­er­al more that fly under the radar. Take, for instance, the sto­ry of Daniel Jefferson, who alleges that, after being arrest­ed by Memphis Police in 2015 dur­ing a drug inves­ti­ga­tion, he was beat­en up at the Raines police precinct.

“They beat me with chairs, ping pong tables; man, I had per­ma­nent boot marks on my back for months,” Jefferson told WREG in Memphis. Internal MPD doc­u­ments detail Jefferson’s account and show that exces­sive force com­plaints were upheld for three of the five offi­cers accused. Jefferson was arrest­ed after alleged­ly fir­ing shots at a plain­clothes offi­cer. “He jumped out on me with his gun, so I let off my shots, and I kept on going,” Jefferson said. Jefferson even­tu­al­ly went to prison on charges of aggra­vat­ed assault and being a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm but the charge of attempt­ed first-degree mur­der was dropped.

Jefferson was unapolo­getic about shoot­ing the offi­cer sim­ply because he wasn’t aware of who he was. “I thought it was just a reg­u­lar [exple­tive] — reg­u­lar per­son try­ing to rob me,” he said. He did admit that if he was aware the man was an offi­cer, his response would’ve been dif­fer­ent. “I ain’t gonna lie, if I knew he was an offi­cer, I would have sur­ren­dered. You know what I’m say­ing? I ain’t try­ing to shoot no police officer.”

He still has con­cerns about how much worse his sit­u­a­tion could’ve been which, giv­en every­thing we know, is com­plete­ly valid. In the same year that Jefferson was beat­en, Sandra Bland was killed found dead in police cus­tody. While he has yet to file a law­suit, Jefferson does want some com­pen­sa­tion for what he endured. “They know they … have to pay [a] big boy bag of mon­ey, you hear me?”

While some of the offi­cers were sus­pend­ed due to the inci­dent, it’s unclear if any of them are cur­rent­ly employed by the Memphis Police Department. MPD did not respond to Jefferson’s alle­ga­tions when asked by WREG on Monday. It’s tru­ly sad that Jefferson was beat­en in cus­tody and the fact he’s still alive is both a source of amaze­ment and relief.